A Great Welsh Sporting Triumph
This past Saturday was a great day for Welsh sport. However, with all the euphoria over the Welsh Grand Slam, not to mention a good win for Swansea, one would be easily forgiven for missing what was quite possibly the most remarkable Welsh triumph of all that day. Kerry Hope is, most likely, not a name that will be instantly familiar to most sports fans. The 30-year-old Merthyr Tydfil native was a talented amateur boxer, who seemed to be a great professional prospect when he joined up with now-legendary trainer Enzo Calzaghe. Hope got his professional career off to a great start, winning his first eleven fights but after that his career stalled somewhat. Defeat to Matthew Hall was followed by a disappointing no-contest and Hope changed trainers and moved to the USA in a bid to get his career on back on track. While he started with a win there, his career again faltered when he dropped a wide points decision to Minnesota hopeful Caleb Truax. Hope considered that he had been the victim of hometown scoring and contemplated retirement.
Hope had been particularly unlucky in that, of his three defeats, two had come in title fights. The first, for the Welsh Area title had come after he was badly cut in the second round after an accidental clash of heads. The second was the fight against Truax, which had been for the WBF International Title (admittedly, hardly the most prestigious of belts). Nevertheless, Hope returned to Britain and got his career moving again. Three straight wins got him a fight with Tony Hill, an eliminator for the British title. Hope continued his good run of form here, knocking his man down in the final round to guarantee himself a shot at the British Middleweight Championship. Once again, however, Hope’s bad luck with title fights returned to haunt him. The supposedly guaranteed title fight never materialised and it looked as if Hope would have to be contented with another crack at the far less valuable Welsh title. Then, finally, the Tydfil man’s luck changed.
European Middleweight Champion Grzegorz Proksa found himself without a challenger and his management picked on Hope to step in as a late replacement. With only just over a month’s notice to take the fight, Hope faced a fearsome challenge. The British-based Pole was one of the fastest rising stars in the world middleweight scene. Although only making his first defence of the title, Proksa was unbeaten in twenty-six fights. He had knocked out his last ten opponents, nine of them inside six rounds. Altogether, he had nineteen knockouts from his twenty-six wins and all four of the major sanctioning bodies, the IBF, WBA, WBC and WBO ranked him in the top seven middleweights in the world. Hope, by contrast, had sixteen wins and three defeats on his record, with only one victory coming by knockout. It’s plain to see that Proksa’s management assumed that he would be a respectable but straightforward proposition for their rising star.
For the first couple of rounds it seemed to be going the champion’s way. Proksa looked strong and in control but right at the end of the second round, a horrendous clash of heads badly cut the champion. His corner cried foul, claiming that Hope had deliberately butted their man but the referee, I think rightly, ruled the clash accidental. Indeed, Sky analyst and former IBF Cruiserweight Champion Glenn McCrory suggested that Proksa had actually put himself in harm’s way by throwing a wild punch at Hope. Following through on the inaccurate shot, his head was left in a very dangerous position where a clash was likely, if not inevitable. It might almost have been poetic justice. Three years earlier, an accidental head clash in the second round had cost Hope his chance of winning the Welsh title. Now, it seemed, lady luck was smiling on him.
Proksa came out in the third round looking for vengeance but Hope, perhaps heartened by the blood on the side of his opponent’s face, was ready for him. As the Pole advanced with a weak guard and the obvious intention of landing the big knockout punch, Hope was able to land plenty of punches of his own. Moreover, it seemed that the champion and his corner had perhaps underestimated Hope’s power. While he did not have enough power to knock the Pole out, he at least had enough to get his attention. Proksa seemed to have only one strategy, to walk through Hope’s punches in order to land that one big shot of his own. Every time he did land, however, Hope was able to take the shot and Proksa was unable to follow up because he was taking too many punches himself.
None of which is to say that this was one-sided. The fight was exciting and very close. On many occasions Hope was forced to stand and trade with his fearsome adversary but each time he managed to extricate himself without every really looking in trouble while on several occasions he managed to land satisfyingly hard punches of his own. When the final bell came, no one knew how the judges would rule it. I felt that Hope had done enough to nick the fight. In the event, so it proved. One judge scored the bout a draw, with both of the others giving it Kerry Hope, the winner and new European Middleweight Champion!
Who knows where this leaves the Welshman? Proksa’s career has been thrown into chaos, while Hope now sees opportunities lining up that he may well have thought were going to pass him by. The middleweight division is a very exciting one in world boxing at the moment and there are fights galore to be had for the European champion, with maybe even world title shots to come. Proksa will probably want a rematch and maybe if he gets one he will quickly end this fairytale story. In the meantime, Kerry Hope can quite rightly bask in the glory of being the man who made his own luck and finally got his day in the sun.
Marshall Law 